Newsletter #264 Partisanship & Polarization, Childlessness

On a long-enough timeline, we all start to look Conservative

Announcements 

I’m back in the Bay!

Weekly Shoutout

Shoutout to @Davis for joining @Dane and @Arpan and I for Founders@Lux

Food for Thought

• Some evidence suggests that Republicans started radicalizing (as in moving further towards the extreme ends of the spectrum) earlier than Democrats and yet Democrats have moved further to the Left than Republicans have moved to the Right

  

• Also, we are a unique time in US political history where the public’s perception of the health of the economy is almost completely detached from reality: America is doing great (in fact best post-Covid recovery world-wide) but average people don’t think so bc….Joe Biden!

  

• Lastly, despite some hints that Silicon Valley is hosting more conservatives who are supporting a Trump administration (typical VCs buying at the peak ahaha), the employees are still over-whelmingly Democrats

  

Crowd Pleasers 

• Here are two graphs that wonderfully illustrate how we need to transform our perception of those who disagree in order to escape the polarization cycle!

  

• More broadly, we need to move past scapegoating as target the real economic enemies that are a barrier to shared prosperity

  

Mind-Benders

• Following JD Vance’s comments about America being run by childless cat-ladies who try to impose their misery on everyone else, I thought I’d share some of the latest data on what truly causes childlessness in modern societies

• The decline in fertility is almost entirely because women under 25 are no longer getting pregnant I.E. as teen moms vanish, pregnancy rates massively decline

  

• You might expect to find socially liberal beliefs (like that women need to focus on their careers), but Aria Babu says the data don’t support this. Instead, the biggest driver of low fertility seems to be a belief that taking care of kids is a lot of work and you’ll screw them up if you cut any corners.